You Need to Stop Making Your Employees Happy
Employee Happiness is not Employee Engagement
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A happy employee is not necessarily an engaged employee.
Albeit used interchangeably, employee happiness and employee engagement are both overlapping terms used in workplace culture. Here’s why: a happy employee can contribute to a positive workplace culture, which can create high levels of engagement. In the same vein, engaged employees who are fulfilled and satisfied with their jobs may report higher levels of happiness than their disengaged peers.
Since they are so similar, business leaders often view happiness and engagement as the same, hence resulting in organizations approaching employee happiness as an objective when looking to decrease attrition and improve productivity.
Happiness is the goal and the initiatives to support it follow.
The problem is, while the goal is welcoming, focusing solely on employee happiness can prove to be counterintuitive — at a significant cost to any business.
What’s the Difference?
To make it clear, employee happiness and employee engagement often co-exist — having one begets the other. However, any business must understand the distinct difference between the two and the impact that they make in the business.
Happy Employees
By definition, happiness is an abstract feeling. It is predicated on an infinite number of external and internal factors. In that vein, employee happiness is virtually impossible to measure without the use of neurotechnologies. Unless you have a tool that is directly wired up to your employee’s brain, using just a survey can prove to be a biased and inaccurate instrument.
Even if you are not trying to measure their happiness, it is a fact that happy employees are great.
But what are they happy about?
When a happy employee lacks engagement, they are simply unproductive. They may, for example, enjoy the companionship of their colleagues and the conversations with them. They may also love the perks like free breakfast and Friday nights out.
